Elon Musk on Paramount's investor wish list as Larry Ellison carries $46.7 billion of the load

American billionaire David Ellison is weighing whether to ask Elon Musk to help finance his $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, a move that would hand the world's richest person a stake in the parent of CBS News and CNN just as the deal clears its last legal hurdle.

Paramount executives have discussed inviting Musk to "become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount," Semafor reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Musk is one of several wealthy individuals the Paramount chief executive has considered, the report said, and the size of any investment could not be learned. Paramount declined to comment, and a representative for Musk did not respond.

The logic is family. Ellison's father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has personally guaranteed $46.7 billion of the equity behind the deal, and the elder Ellison and Musk go back years: he put $1 billion into Musk's 2022 purchase of Twitter, invested in Tesla in 2018 and sat on its board. Bringing in outside money would spread a load that currently rests on one man's balance sheet.

Musk, worth about $950 billion by Forbes' count, would also bring a following. Semafor noted that an investment from him would be read as a vote of confidence from a businessman with a devoted retail investor base, one that has just lifted SpaceX to a $2 trillion valuation since its June listing.

The timing is deliberate. Paramount settled on Monday with 12 state attorneys general who had sued to block the merger on antitrust grounds. A judge will review the proposed consent decree on Thursday, and if it is approved the deal is expected to close in about two weeks.

The settlement's terms are unusually specific. Paramount cannot sell the Paramount or Warner Bros. studio lots in California for five years, must spend an extra $300 million a year on U.S. film production, and has to release at least 30 films in theaters in each of the first two years and 32 a year after that, with a 45-day exclusive window. A "news editorial independence board" will set journalism principles for CNN and CBS News.

That last clause is where a Musk stake gets complicated. Musk, a major donor to President Donald Trump and the former head of DOGE, would become a part-owner of two of the country's largest news operations. A financial stake would not by itself confer editorial control, but it would draw scrutiny from Democrats already uneasy about the deal's foreign money: sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have committed $24 billion and would own 38.5% of the merged company, after the FCC last week approved foreign ownership of up to 49.5%.

Ellison, 43, built Skydance into a producer of blockbusters before taking control of Paramount last year. Warner Bros. would give him HBO, CNN, DC and a second century-old studio. Whether Musk writes a check or not, the question of who owns America's newsrooms is about to have a new answer.